Cloud architectures are used in cloud computing and cloud storage systems for offering infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud services. Examples of cloud architectures include the VMware vCloud Director® cloud architecture software, Amazon EC2™ web service, and OpenStack™ open source cloud computing service. IaaS cloud service is a type of cloud service that provides access to physical and/or virtual resources in a cloud environment. These services provide a tenant application programming interface (API) that supports operations for manipulating IaaS constructs such as virtual machines (VMs) and logical networks.
Cloud architectures typically maintain a pool of available IP (Internet Protocol) addresses that may be used to communicate with the “outside world” (e.g., via a global or wide ranging computer network such as the Internet). An inefficient scheme for assigning IP addresses to tenants may result in poor performance.